Willa #2
“Careful, Hartley,” he murmurs, his voice low enough to feel like a touch. “You keep selling like that, I might have to keep you.”
My pulse stumbles so hard it’s humiliating.
I turn my head just enough to meet his eyes. “You couldn’t afford me.”
His gaze drops to my mouth. Just once. “I’m starting to think you’d be worth the investment.”
Heat rushes up my throat.
It would be so easy to turn this into a joke. To snap back. To shove him lightly and roll my eyes and remind us both that we are rivals, that I am only here because I lost a bet, that every minute I spend learning his operation is a minute I’m not at Hartley knowing and infuriating all at once. “So they are.”
For the next hour, we fall into a rhythm I do not want to enjoy.
Brooks pours. I talk. I pour. He watches. We argue quietly over descriptions in between customers, low-voiced and smiling just enough that anyone watching would probably mistake it for flirtation.
Which it is most definitely not. Nope. No way, no how.
“You can’t call it brooding,” I tell him after one customer leaves with a bottle of their driest cider.
“Why not?”
“Because cider doesn’t brood. It’s not some emo kid from the early 00s listening to Radiohead and putting more eyeliner on than me.”
“I don’t know what to tell you, Hartley. Grab your Jimmy Eat World cds, because this one broods.”
“It’s just tannins—”
He shakes his head. “It has depth.”
“It’s fermented fruit, not a duke in a gothic novel,” I try again.
He grins, our sparring match pausing. “You read gothic novels?”
“I’m like a kaleidoscope of contradictions.”
“I’m learning that.” He says it lightly, but something in his tone makes my hands pause on the flight paddle.
When I glance over, he’s looking at me again, not like competition. Not like an inconvenience. Like I am something he’s trying to understand without taking apart.
A group of four women comes in next—scarves, lipstick, and cheerful opinions in full force—and I recognize them immediately.
Marlene Bishop leads the charge, her silver hair swept into its usual immaculate twist, owner of the flower shop on Main and unofficial keeper of everyone’s business.
Behind her is Dotty Alvarez, who runs the bakery two doors down from the flower shop and has been slipping me extra cinnamon rolls since I was twelve.
Jeri Fleming, my late grandmother’s longtime bridge partner and wife of our congressman.
She still wears the same bright coral lipstick she did at every summer picnic.
And following behind her, Reagan Fleming, her eighteen year old granddaughter with her long, glossy blonde hair and sweet smile.
They spot me at the bar and light up like they’ve just found the most interesting piece of gossip in town.
“Willa Hartley!” Marlene says, delighted. “What on earth are you doing here?”
“Community outreach,” I say brightly.
Brooks coughs.
I kick his boot lightly behind the bar without looking at him.
The women absolutely notice and Reagan gives a nervous giggle which she quickly covers with her hand.
Their eyes sharpen with terrifying collective interest. “Oh,” Dotty says, her green eyes flashing with intrigue. Great.
“I was just kidding,” I say immediately. Brooks turns away, shoulders shaking. Then I add, “I lost a bet.”
“You did?” Carol asks as if she and the entire town didn’t already know this.
“I did.”
Carol’s eyes bounce between Brooks and me. “And now you work here?”
“Just for a couple of weeks.”
Brooks sets down a flight paddle in front of them. “Don’t worry, we’re making the most of it.”
The women beam as if we have just announced an engagement. “I bet you are,” Mrs. Bishop says.
I glance at him. “Some of us are.”
They ask for recommendations, and because I am not a monster, I give them honest ones.
I steer one away from the semi-dry and toward something softer.
Suggest the Hearthline for Marlene who says she doesn’t like “dessert cider.” I pour Reagan a half-pint of Calder’s non-alcoholic cider.
I even talk Dotty into the coffee because apparently I am now personally invested in Calder Cider’s profit margins, which is a deeply alarming development.
When they leave, they are carrying two bags of coffee, four bottles, and a look that says they will be reporting everything to everyone in town by lunchtime.
Brooks leans one hip against the counter. “Community outreach, huh?”
“I panicked.”
“You looked very composed.”
“I’m a pro at panicking professionally. Besides, I told them I was kidding.”
“I suppose you did.” There’s that tone again. Soft amusement. Careful attention.
By three p.m., my feet ache, my cheeks hurt from smiling, and I have accidentally sold more Calder products than I am emotionally prepared to admit.
The tasting room quiets for a moment, leaving only the hum of refrigeration, the faint music playing through hidden speakers, and the low buzz of bees outside the open door where late-season flowers spill from planters.
I lean against the back counter and take a sip of the coffee Brooks refreshed for me without my asking.
“You’re really good at this,” he says.
I keep my eyes on the room. “I know.”
He laughs softly. “There she is.”
That pulls my gaze to him.
He’s standing at the other end of the bar, arms crossed, sleeves still pushed up, sunlight catching along the planes of his face.
There is something unfair about a man who looks like that in a room he built from nothing.
Unwillingly, I think about my great grandmother and if this is how she felt the first time she stood in the tasting room she and my great grandfather built together, watching him like he belonged to it and it belonged to him.
There’s something intoxicating about watching Brooks belong somewhere so completely.
“I don’t do things halfway,” I say to him.
His eyes slowly skim over my face as he says, “I know.” His certainty lands strangely. Like he has already decided something about me and is not asking permission to be right.
I should bristle. Instead, I take another sip of coffee, the cinnamon settling warm on my tongue.
Outside, a child shrieks with laughter as Scrumpy darts across the patio with what appears to be half a muffin in her paws. One of the baby raccoons tumbles after her, all feet and tail and bad decisions.
A laugh slips out before I can stop it.
“You’re smiling,” he says.
“Am not.”
“Are too.”
“It’s just gas. Like when a newborn smiles.”
He presses his lips together like he’s trying not to laugh. “That’s your defense?”
“Hey—it’s a medical condition.”
Brooks tears his eyes from me, chuckling silently while looking out the window where the baby raccoons are still tumbling after Scrumpy. “We should probably name them, you know.”
“The babies?”
“Well I’m not naming your gas. And they can’t just be ‘the babies’ forever,” he retorts. “I’m thinking...something classic. Bandit, Desperado, and Marauder?”
I roll my eyes. “They’re all so obvious.”
“Hm. Maybe something ironic. Princess?”
I stare at him. “You are not naming a raccoon Princess.”
“Why not? She has range.”
“You don’t even know which one is a she.”
“I have instincts.”
“Your instincts also thought Scrumpy was a boy…”
He grins. “You’re smiling again.”
“It’s still gas.”
He leans in, his breath soft and warm against my ear. “I think you’re enjoying yourself.”
The worst part is… he’s right. I am enjoying myself. Not because I don’t love my own orchard. Not because I forgot the competition or the fact that Brooks Calder is still the man standing between me and the ribbon that has mattered to my family for years.
Because his brothers are ridiculous.
Because his coffee is witchcraft.
Because his systems are smart, and his cider is better than I want it to be.
Because Brooks is watching me like he sees all the parts of me I usually keep too busy to notice.